Yvan Rodrigues' problogue

If you are tracking a parcel and you see this, it likely means that the delivery has partially or wholly been contracted to CargoJet. They fly out of Hamilton airport which is technically in Mount Hope Ontario. Your parcel will probably be delivered by UPS.

After doing some maintenance on my mail server, Outlook for Android started bitching about my certificate. My certificate was fine. 

The problem is that my IMAP server, Dovecot, has discontinued support for the shitty SSLv2 protocol, which is a good thing.

In the Dovecot config, I set ssl_min_protocol to TLSv1. Unfortunately the Android app does not support TLS, so it was unable to negotiate a secure transport. 

To resolve this issue, I changed the minimum to SSLv3, which is bad, but it works for now.

When travelling in another country, it's hard not to note some of the quirkier cultural differences. here are some of my observations. I haven't gone out of my way to be politically correct.

I'll keep adding to this list while I'm here.

Useful

Vendors

• I have only ever been harassed by street vendors at a popular tourist site.

Police

• Most police stations have one English-speaking officer on duty.
• Every police officer I have talked to has been friendly and extremely helpful. If you ask them where something is, they will often find an excuse to drive you there, unprompted.
• I don't think you can walk for 10 minutes without encountering a police station. They are everywhere.
• The sign will often say "Traffic Police", but they carry a pistol, a rifle, and SWAT shields.
• The officers that I spoke to had much loyalty to protecting the people of their district, but did not have strong feelings about loyalty to the state. They consider that the job of the military police.

Passports

• Any non-trivial exchange with the police will involved them photocopying your passport. This is actually kind of handy, because a condition of the Chinese visa is that you report your location to the police. Hotels do this for you. Hostels may or may not.
• You will also be asked for your passport for many other things, such as buying bus/train/plane tickets.
• Guard it at all times. I met an Indonesian man who lost his passport, and dealing with the government to reissue his visa took about a week, and may trips to the capitol.

Water

• There are no public drinking fountains, because the water is not considered potable (even in most hotels). Instead, boiling water dispensers are very common. I think this is one reason that tea is so ubiquitous here; who wants to drink hot water?
• Most hotels provide bottled water and a kettle.
• Learn to enjoy Chinese tea. Kind of like Chai, no two are the same.
• Locals do not use teabags, they just dump the ingredients in water (it looks like you're drinking pot-pourri).
• Unfortunately for once you do acquire a taste for Chinese tea, it is never served strong.

Taxis

• Most taxi drivers are kind and helpful, use the meter, and will provide a receipt. Although not expected, I always tips these drivers and usually tell them why.
• A few will try to take advantage of foreigners, and charge you more; but at least they will do so before they embark.
• If they actually try to rip you off or fight about the fare, find a police officer (there is always one nearby). A threat to be sent to jail will clear up the issue.
• You can get a good inter-city rate for a taxi by sharing a taxi. You can do this yourself, ask the cabbie to do so (if in an area where other people going to the destination is likely), or they may just do it themselves.

Buses

• Finding the bus station can be tricky, because the buses are in the back, and there isn't any English signage. After a police officer took me to the bus station, I said, "I never would have guess this was the bus station." He replied, "But it says so on the big sign out front??"
• Just hop on any bus if you're not at a bus station. Someone will come to get payment eventually. Local trips will generally cost less than 10 RMB, and 25 RMB for inter-city routes is normal.
• The bus will not leave a station until every seat has a person on it. If it won't fit overhead, and the bus doesn't have a luggage area underneath, your large pack is going to have to sit on your lap.
• In some areas, buses have seat belts, and you are expected/required to use them.

Planes

• Mobile phones must be turned off and put away at all times, except while the plane is at the terminal. This is a CAA regulation. Flight mode doesn't count, it has to be off. If you don't, you will be asked to put it away (and they will make sure you do).
• This applies to inter-city flights, as well as international flights if the airline is based on China.

Tipping

• Tipping is not expected in most circumstances.
• I always tip when anyone goes over and above, and it is appreciated.
• It is not rude to tell them why, and it encourages good behaviour, and goodwill toward foreigners.

Internet

• Yes, websites are heavily censored here. Sometimes this is done at a DNS level; usually the connection attempt just times out.
• Everything Google is blocked. Bing search works, but some results will be censored.
• VPN services like ExpressVPN do work, but depending on the protocol used, the connection may get dropped regularly.
• PPTP, while less secure, does seem to universally work without disruption.
• Generally, use of mobile data is uncommon and expensive.
• Instead, there is free public wi-fi almost everywhere in urban areas.
• Unfortunately, in order to access it, you usually need to authenticate with your Chinese phone number or WeChat account, even at McDonalds.
• Some KFCs do not require authentication, and hotels usually do not, so loitering outside was sometimes an option.
• I have yet to have a reliable and fast connection.

Strangers

• I've heard people remark that Chinese people are not friendly, or even rude. I have never had this be the case, but they do keep to themselves unless interacted with.
• As an example, an elderly lady looked overwhelmed by having to carry her luggage down a long flight of stairs at the train station. No one stopped to help her. I motioned to help, and carried them down for her, and she was extremely grateful.

Security

• Expect x-rays, metal detectors, and a pat-down everywhere you go. Train stations, bus stations, subway stations, malls, banks; pretty much anywhere people congregate. And they actually do their job.
• Gas stations are usually barricaded, and the police will let you in.
• Before letting you in, a search of the cabin/trunk is customary. The are looking for firearms, explosives, or anything that could threaten the attendant or other customers.
• Passengers must leave the vehicle while it is in the station. Stations have a waiting area with chairs for passengers. I think this is so a group of people do not try to overpower the attendant.

Electricity

• Almost all power outlets are universal, and can accommodate North American plugs.
• Not all are grounded, so my 3-prong power bar/extention cord was not always useful.

Interesting

• In an entire week of travelling all over the country, I have only seen 4 non-Chinese people. It is a reminder of how diverse Canada is; in fact 4.3% of Canadians are of Chinese heritage.
• In Sandaoling, my room came with a Mahjong table, complete with tiles. It took me a while to notice, because it was covered with a tablecloth.
• The scale by which wind turbine generators are used here makes ours look like a quaint science fair project (in a sense, it is).
• KFC is huge here. About as common as Tim Hortons' in Canada.
• Fast food restaurants often will present you with a laminated menu with pictures, and you can gesture toward what you want.
• Following the death of Mao Tse Tung and the end of the Cultural Revolution, hundreds of millions of Chinese people have been pulled above the poverty line, initiated by the government of Deng Xiaoping in 1978. Then 68%, now only 10% live below the poverty line (as defined by the IMF).

Noteworthy

• I've heard people remark that Chinese people are not friendly or rude. I have never had this be the case, but they do keep to themselves unless interacted with.
• As an example, an elderly lady looked overwhelmed by having to carry her luggage down a long flight of stairs at the train station. No one stopped to help her. I motioned to help, and carried them down for her, and she was extremely grateful.
• Yes, there is Walmart in China.
• Although not quite up to the same standards, IHG hotels are very safe bet.

Frustrating

• Smoking is still widely allowed everywhere, and ventilation is usually bad. In Beijing, smoking is not allowed indoors, but everyone smells like it, picked up from people smoking outside.
• Many non-smoking hotel rooms smell like smoke, and have an ashtray.
• Trains (not the bullet ones) wreak of smoke. Very sad for someone who loves riding trains; it makes the experience unenjoyable.
• In addition to being heavily censored, hotel wi-fi/wired internet connections are very unreliable and slow.
• If you came to see rural China, with lush vegetation, beautiful gardens, and rice paddies, don't come in winter.
• The Terracotta Warriors exhibit closes at 4:30pm.

Useless

• It is very difficult to suppress the urge so sing Convoy out loud when you see one.
• I'm not saying there is a genetic predisposition or anything, but yes, Chinese drivers are awful.

I suck at telling jokes. Every once in a while, I come up with a killer punchline though. I thought this one was pretty awesome, but others beat me to it. 

There are no new ideas.

https://github.com/chjj/ttystudio

Neat!

Sometimes an actor will look translucent, but when I select it the opacity is set to the maximum.

In the Assembly tab, click the Assembly Selection Mode button (the first one that looks like a lego brick).

Now the actor's opacity will be correct and it can be adjusted.

A COM component cannot be registered from a network drive.

It was my intention to pack as light as possible for my trip. That said, I needed to bring enough gear that I could remotely solve any kind of work-related emergency that might have come up.

In the end, I ended up heavier than I would have liked. I should have put in the effort to weigh the heavy things make some tough choices. I could have easily shed 5kg, probably more.

This is what I packed, and what I would change.

PS: By removing the unneeded items, I would have saved 6.3 kg (14 pounds)!

A UNESCO World heritage Site, the Kalka-Shimla Railway was bulit commencing in 1891. It connected Shimla, in the foothills of the Himilayas at 2186m altitude with Kalka, at an elevation of 658m.

The narrow-gauge rails are 762mm apart, less than half that of "normal" railways, allowing the engine and rolling stock to maneuver around 919 curves, with radii as small as 37.5m.

The line includes 864 bridges and 103 tunnels.

My train from New Delhi arrived about 6:30, and I hurried to buy my INR230 ticket and climb aboard for the 6 hour, 97km trek that I travelled more than 2250km to see.

It was totally worth it. I've posted a handful of photos, and I have dozens more of beautiful mountainscapes that are done no justice by the camera. You had to be there.

The air grew cooler and thinner as we ascended the mountains. There were at least 10 stops at stations along the way. Each had its own chai wallah, curry booth, and sweets shop. All of us hopped on and off, scurrying back when the engine honked its departure horn.

Manual switches and mechanical semaphores, driven by pushrods, cables, and pulleys still control traffic on the line.

Expecting a few tiny villages along the way, I was amazed to find huge towns each with thousands of people, houses decorating the steep rock cliffs like a European picture postcard.

I thought San Francisco had steep hills, but upon reaching Shimla, I realized my plan to stay a while and explore would be almost impossible. In the thin mountain air, at over 7000ft ASL, my body couldn't complete the 2km walk uphill to the post office to find a postcard. The taxi drivers refused to drive me such a short distance. Even at the cool temperatures, a veritable rainfall fell from my pores.

I returned to Kalka on the next train, the sun setting as we descended the steep winding rails.

I giggled as four young fellows eagerly debated cricket. Without knowing the language, I understood the conversation implicitly. One argued his opinion about his team, another took the contrarian view, just for spite, while the rest jeered and pointed out the merits of each. It was a scene you could see in any country, for any sport, on the merits of anything at all.

Noticing my observation, they were immediately curious to know my opinion, to which I explained that I had tried to learn the rules of the game a few nights previous, and gave up on trying to understand overs and wickets.

With their various degrees of English proficiency and confidence, we chatted for the next couple of hours back and forth in simple English. They even tought me some Punjabi, which I quickly forgot minutes later.

Our topics included politics, dating and marriage, the Indian baby girl problem, what -35C feels like, education, and anything else we could think of.

Asking if they had girlfriends, they proudly assured me that they did not, being devout Hindus and Seikh, and looking forward to a day when they will meet their wives to be. I remarked that it must be difficult for them, with only 700 girls for every 1000 boys. "No, we are just more motivated," they laughed. I remarked that with a population of over a billion people, reproduction didn't seem to be an issue. My words were a bit to complex. "India is good at babies!" I simplified to roaring applause and laughter. "yes, you are right", they confirmed.

Remarking that it was -35C back home that night, they asked, "How do you live?" I explained that in the winter we just adapted, staying inside most of the time except for the trips to and from work. "No, how to you live?" they repeated. Having never lived in insulated homes with central heat, the concept seemed impossible.

My new friends were a view into a fun, devout, positive, new India; they are driven to seek education, find and honour wives, raise children, and contribute in every way they can to their India.

None of their spiritual practices condoned drinking, so after our trip we shared chai in lieu of Kingfisher, took photos, and went our ways.

They invited me to join them on their journey, but I had a train back to New Delhi to catch. While waiting, I found some shops near the station, indulged in an Indian sweet or two, and picked up a blanket for the cold trip back.

The Rajdhani Express is a high-speed train that runs from Madgaon, Goa to New Delhi, 2000km in 26 hours. It left at 10:00, so after tea and goodbyes, I left Porvorim by bus to Madgaon via Panjim, arriving at 9:30. On my last day in Goa, I finally had the bus “system” worked out.

The train would arrive In Delhi the next day around noon. From there, I would need to make my way across the Delhi subway system to another train station to catch the train to Kalma; however that train would not leave until nightfall, so this would leave me the day to explore Delhi a bit (one of the places my sister would not visit, FYI).

I figured out that if I timed things right, I would not need to seek accommodation, instead sleeping on the trains.

The ticket that I booked to Delhi was AC1, first class. I figured the 26-hour trip might be a good time to spend extra for comfort. My only comparison was sleeper class, which I took from Mumbai to Goa upon arriving in India. The two classes are very different experiences, and I now know my preference.

More on that, later.

In General Aviation, there is a term called the one hundred dollar hamburger. It's what recreational pilots call a short flight to a nearby airport, to fly for no reason other than the love of flying. The hamburger at the airport café is as good a reason as any to leave the ground.

Indian Railways publishes a book called Trains at a Glance, that includes not only every schedule for every train, but all kinds of information about the booking process, menus, and more. It is a priceless tool for planning a trip. Although much of this information is available online, it is fragmented over hundreds of webpages, and the actual schedules can be searched, but not just downloaded en masse for browsing. The publication costs just 45 rupees (less than a dollar) and is about the size and thickness of a phone book for a small city.

Today I would buy one. I planned a route that would take me past four train stations. Hopefully I would get lost along the way. The words, I wonder where that road goes... always make Sarah nervous.

My first leg was to Thivim, the closest railway station, about 19km away, Northeast of Mapusa. As I turned off the highway at Mapusa, I saw a beautiful windy road with very little traffic, so I diverted. Some random left and right turns later, I found myself riding through Nashinola, a stunning village, full of hills and flowers; also the location of my grandmother's homestead.

Following another interesting-looking road, I rode through a quarry. Goa has hundreds of mining roads, each consisting of no more than a lane of Goa's signature red soil. These are uncharted in Google maps, but are detailed fairly accurately in Bing maps.

What amazed me is how I could follow a dirt path for long distances on mining roads without seeing anyone for 20 minutes, thinking I need to give up and turn around, only to stumble into a little village of 50 people, complete with a general store, following by another 20 minutes of nothing. As this happened over and over, I realized that I was seeing Goa's agricultural heritage. Villages like Nashinola, no doubt started as the crossing of two dirt roads long ago. As I studied my maps in detail, I realized what a huge fraction of Goa's population is invisible; unseen and unknown to the vast majority, accessible only by axle-breaking mining roads, their citizens living their lives traditionally in small communities.

Thivim station didn't have any copies of the book. There was however an example of something Ulrike was telling me she read about the previous day.

To save fuel and tires, freight trucks actually load their trucks onto flatbed rail cars for long trips. The drivers stay in their cabs for the extended journey, where they sleep and cook meals. About 100 trucks were on board at Thivim, and the train was leaving the station as I arrived. Think of all of the pollution, carbon, tires, accidents, deaths, and traffic that is being averted.

My next stop was Naroa Station. I went via mining roads. A photo shows an "intersection" of two such roads. A few missed turns led me to a dry dock on the North shore of the Mandovi river, where I met Sunil. Currently unemployed, Sunil and his friends gather for chat and games in the early afternoon. Impressed by is English, I listened as he told me about working in Dubai, fishing for mud, how to heal a cut, and the dream of working in Canada, only attainable if he can save 40,000 rupees for the work placement.

Naroa Station was not just a short ride away. I mean, it was a short ride away, but it wasn't there. It seems to have been abandoned long ago. Next.

Now in the middle of nowhere, the next stop was Karmali station. Inconveniently, the Mandovi river and Malar Island were between me and Karmali. As I was essentially following the rail line, this should not have posed a problem, except that the train had a bridge, and I didn't. How could my closest of friends, a map, lie to me? Thankfully, there was a ferry there, and after being accosted by a mentally-challenged person, I was aboard and on my way to Malar. I didn't check if there was a ferry on the other side of the island.

There was. The North/East half Naroa island was filled with dense communities of small houses and had the feeling of a European village, windy, intersecting roads at all angles, and often paved with stone. The South/West half was primary wetlands. At the end of the road I found the other ferry to Old Goa on the South shore of the Mandovi.

Karmali should have been easy to find. I had been there before. Twice. I had a map. I found it on my fifth attempt. They had a copy! Faced with success, I realized I had not brought my backpack, so I fashioned the book into a seat pad of sorts.

I checked with Ulrike to what she was up to, and met her at the Urban Café in Panjim.

It's harder to get lost with a GPS, but you can if you want to. 6 hours, 45 rupees for the book, petrol, and I assume I ate or drank something along the way. 1000 rupees well spent.

I finished my taxes.

Ulrike and I had lunch at Maracas, where I introduced her to Ralph Pinto, the owner.

I attended SEQC quiz night in Madgaon. The topic was science. My team kicked butt.

I worked during the day, primarily at the Urban Café.

Ulrike checked out Goaphoto 2015.

I had a nice beef tenderloin at Maracas, followed by their weekly quiz night. Look, I'm being social!

This was our quiz team, "The Foreigners", me, and Matt and Becky who are Brits who have lived here for 7 months, because Becky's company opened an office here. Becky's voice is delightfully like Hermione Granger's.

"Are you mad, Harry?"

Today was mainly a research and planning day.

I got the scoop on the Ali Salem Bird Sanctuary, the tigers waterfalls in the Mhadei Wildlife Reservation, some amazing roads to check out on the motorbike, and a train route that winds up the Western Ghats, through tropical rainforest. All are nearby.

For reference, pepper spray is available on Amazon.in, but anti-venom is not.

I went through the infuriating process of trying to get a (second) SIM card in India.

During a walk to the shops, Ulrike and I ran into Bannu, feeding the neighbourhood dogs. They all know to show up at 5:30 for chicken and rice.

Happy birthday, Mama!

Sunday was a "day off".

It was mostly spent at Ozran beach, a small beach south of Vagator.

We rode our bikes home, ate "Chinese food", and watched The Kings of Summer.

Papa would always return from Goa with Feni and bags of cashews like these, with the skins still intact. A bit of an acquired taste, the skins add the slightest bitter/sour/nutty flavour that beautifully complements the natural buttery flavour of the nut.

Every time I go to an Indian or asian market back home I check to see if they have any of these nuts, but they never do. My best guess is that they are considered inferior to the peeled raw and roasted nuts that are ubiquitous.

I found them bagged at the local general store, and they're as great as I remember.

On a cool and humid morning, a thick mist lingered outside. As it condensed on the leaves of the trees overhead, water droplets formed into drops. The trees magically rained, the skies sunny, albeit diffused overhead.

After morning tea, I walked to the shops to get a few things, including money from an ATM to pay for them. The neighbourhood general store has a little bit of everything. I brought home:

• Coke (it has been a while)
• Maaza (a mango drink with real juice, bottled by Coca-Cola)
• Cashews with skins
• Kingfisher Draught Tall-boy
• Gulab Juman (cake balls in rosewater syrup)
• Toothpaste, tissues, and other necessities

The ice cream cone didn't make it home.

On the way to and from the shops is what I call The Sad Park. The sign at its entrance, "SCHBS LTD. DEFENSE COLONY CHILDREN'S PARK", is the only part that isn't rusty, broken, or overgrown. You can walk through the rusted gate to get a little shade, or maybe slide down the uncomfortable-looking (yet elaborate) concrete slide, but the teeter-totter decays on the ground next to its pivot.

I can imagine 40 years ago; the screams and cheers of children playing here could be heard throughout the neighbourhood as the sun lowered in the sky.

Details to follow.

To my beautiful and loving wife, Sarah:

I miss you so much, and think about you all day, every day. I would say I wish you were here, but that would be a selfish sentiment. I know you'd melt. As to whether you'd rather be home in -25C temperatures, I don't think either of us could say for sure..

Thank you for being independent enough to let me leave you for a month, but not so much that you won't want me back.

Soon we will be back in each other's arms, and we'll both have so many stories to share.

Baby, you're the greatest.

The flight arrived ni Mumbai more or less on time.

I had booked berths in a couple of trains (in case one fell through). If I could make it to Vasai Road Station in about 90 minutes, I'd make it to the train on time.

Asked a taxi driver, hoping to make a fare, how long it would take to get from the airport to Vasai Station. He told me about 2 hours. After I explained that I needed to catch a train in less than an hour, the estimated time of arrived went from 2 hours to 1. Hmmm... I said it was OK, I would catch my other train instead, but he was quite persistent that he could make it. Tired from sleeping all day, who was I to disagree.

It was like I was in a chase scene in a Hollywood movie. At speeds up to 130km/h on busy streets intended for 40km/h traffic, death was a legitimate concern. We arrived 10 minutes before my train was supposed to leave. I thought I took video along the way, but apparently I didn't press Record.

Unfortunately, not understanding the layout of the station, I was on the commuter side of the station. I waited for my train at the brightly lit platform. As I did, little did I known that my train was leaving from one of the dark until platforms, six tracks over.

It took me a while to realize that I had missed my train. I asked a lot of people about it, by no one spoke English. Finally I found the Station Manager who explained that he looked for me at that track, but I wasn't there. That train would have been a first-class air-conditioned single occupancy berth.

I figured out how to take the commuter train to the Dadar station in Bandra so that I could catch the Mondovi Express a few hours later. By this time it was about 4 in the morning and I was surrounded by very sleepy commuters on their way to work.

It had been a long time since I had anything to eat or drink, and I didn't have any rupees. Luckily there were ATMs at Dadar station, so I took out some money and got some breakfast.

My train arrived more or less on time, my berth waiting for me. I had the upper-side berth in Sleeper class. Each car seats or sleeps 72 people, separated into sections, each with 2 side berths against one side, and two sets of 3 berths across from each other, perpendicular to the side, like this:

Sleeper class is not air conditioned, and it was in daytime configuration, meaning the middle bunks were decommissioned to let people sit. With the windows open, the lack or air conditioning wasn't really an issue. After trying to stay awake, I gave in and crawled up to my bunk, and slept pretty much the whole way to Goa, or about 12 hours. It did get pretty hot up there during the daylight hours. Toward the end of my journey I had a couple of samosas on the train.

Upon arrival I took a taxi to Porvorim, and with a few stop for directions, ultimately pulled up at the house just as Ulrike was standing outside.

I spent a few hours on the phone with Expedia and Turkish airlines. When the Expedia guy told me about the $430 rebooking fee, he neglected to mention the "plus difference in ticket price" part. Not surprisingly, a same-day ticket to India is quite a bit more than one booked a month in advance. In short, they wanted almost $2000 to rebook the flight.

First, I don't have a spare $2000 kicking around; secondly, other airlines are offering the same flight for about $500 less, no strings attached. Nonetheless, not something could afford.

The Turkish Airways rep added fuel to the fire by telling me they will not honour the return portion of my return ticket, because I was a "no-show" for the first segment. Some bullshit about airline policy. The fuck they wouldn't. Now it's personal.

Feb 23 note: Planning on showing up for return flight (still noted as valid on website). If I have to buy a ticket I will sue and take this "policy" to the Supreme Court if I have to.

I spent a few hours researching and considering my options. The one I ended up choosing was a $600 one-way flight through Priceline.com, offered after a failed name-your-own-price attempt.

With only 2 hours to departure, I dropped everything and headed to the airport (checking first for my passport), dropped off the rental car, and made it to the gate with 30 minutes to spare.

When attempting to update from a fully-patched 9.0-RELEASE, you may encounter results like these:

Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 5 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 9.0-RELEASE from update2.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Inspecting system... done.

WARNING: This system is running a "venus" kernel, which is not a
kernel configuration distributed as part of FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE.
This kernel will not be updated: you MUST update the kernel manually
before running "/usr/sbin/freebsd-update install".

The following components of FreeBSD seem to be installed:
src/src world/base world/doc

The following components of FreeBSD do not seem to be installed:
kernel/generic world/games world/lib32

Does this look reasonable (y/n)? y

Fetching metadata signature for 10.0-RELEASE from update2.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.

The update metadata is correctly signed, but
failed an integrity check.
Cowardly refusing to proceed any further.

You will find lots of people telling you to run this command

sed -i '' -e 's/=_/=%@_/' /usr/sbin/freebsd-update

It won't work. Instead you need to apply this patch:

Index: freebsd-update.sh =================================================================== --- freebsd-update.sh (revision 265210) +++ freebsd-update.sh (working copy) @@ -1110,7 +1110,7 @@ fetch_metadata_sanity () { # Some aliases to save space later: ${P} is a character which can # appear in a path; ${M} is the four numeric metadata fields; and # ${H} is a sha256 hash. - P="[-+./:=%@_[[:alnum:]]" + P="[-+./:=%@_~[[:alnum:]]" M="[0-9]+\|[0-9]+\|[0-9]+\|[0-9]+" H="[0-9a-f]{64}"

I get this question a lot.

You're running a graphics program or some other application that is performing a complex operation that is taking several minutes, yes the CPU usage won't surpass one of these values.

If the value changes up and down, your application is probably I/O-bound, meaning the CPU is waiting for the disk or network to catch up before it can do the next step.

However if it is pegged at one of these values, it is because the CPU-bound operation is single-threaded, and you have a multi-code and/or hyperthreading CPU. In my case, I often see a process pegged at 12/13% because I have a 4-core hyperthreaded (8 virtual CPUs) i7-2600K processor, and the application has not or cannot split the operation over multiple threads.

Looking for an objective about your business? I can help.

• Donation to Guelph Humane Society
• Farm Animals
• Lindt Swiss Classic Milk Chocolate with Hazelnuts 
• Beer, Rye, Irish Cream liqueur, peach schnapps, ...
• Do pharmacies have gift cards for prescriptions?
• Heavy winter mitts for snowblowing

You have a Table of Figures in word and the descriptions do not line up, and some of the lines wrap. Since there isn't a tab after the figure/table number, lines do not wrap correctly.

There isn't a way to do this by setting a format when you create the table. You have to start when you are creating each of the captions.

You have to add a tab in each caption e.g. Figure 23:<tab>A photo of a kitten.

Then once you build your table you can set up tabs for the style used in your Table of Figures.

I took my exam yesterday. If you know anyone who needs cross-platform mobile apps, let them know that you know a Xamarin Certified Mobile Developer.

http://css-tricks.com/centering-css-complete-guide/

echo 'postgrey_flags="--inet=127.0.0.1:10023"' >> /etc/rc.conf
chown postgrey:postgrey /var/db/postgrey
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/postgrey start

Supplies: New bearings (optional), grease (wheel bearing grease, CV joint grease, or molybdenum grease), degreaser, block of wood
Parts: clutch gear (disc), clutch pads
Tools: arbor press or vise, drill, large socket

1. Thoroughly clean the bearings and bearing race with degreaser
   
2. Apply enough grease to the race to make it sticky.
3. Pro tip: If you leave the bearings and race in the magentic part tray for a while, they will become magnetized and will almost assemble themselves.
4. Install each of the bearings into the race.
   
5. When all bearings are installed, thoroughly coat them in grease. Get it right up in there into their private parts.
   
6. Seat the race into the new clutch disc.
   
7. Make a tool like the one shown.
   
8. Sandwich the assembly tool, clutch gear, bearing race, flywheel and a large socket together.
9. Use an arbor press or vise to press the assemblies into place.
   
10. Pro tip: Preheat the bearing race with a hot air gun to make it expand before assembly.
11. Wipe away all excess grease.
12. Install the clutch pads into the clutch disc.
    
13. Use a wooden block and hammer to seat the pads, if necessary.
    

Tools: awl, hammer, magnetic part tray

1. First we need to split the clutch assembly into its two components: the flywheel and the clutch disc. Use an awl and hammer to gently tap the pieces apart. Do this in the parts tray, because the bearings could spill out at any time.
   
   
2. The clutch disc and the bearing race should separate easily.
   
3. Collect all the ball bearings. They are very small, and like to hide.
   
   

If you plan to work on your chinese bicycle engine, you need Super Magic Tool. Technicians call this a Specialized Service Tool, or SST; but I like SMT better. If you bought the engine as a kit, it probably came with SMT. If not, do not attempt disassembly/assembly without it. Pick one up for three bucks.

It is the fucking bees' knees.

The engineers that designed this engine cleverly threaded just about every shaft, passage, hole with one of three sizes of fine threads. SMT can be installed into or over any of these. It is a press, a puller, and an alignment tool, all in one.

Declawing sounds innocent. You remove the nail so it won't grow back, right?

Cat paws and human hands and feet actually have very similar anatomy. Declawing actually is an amputation of the last bone in the paw and the connecting tendon.

It often leaves cats in pain, and arthritis at age 2 or 3 is common.

Learn more at the Paw Project.

In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) unveiled a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by a poll of artists and leaders in the film industry from a list of 400 nominated movies. It became a must-watch list for a generation of film buffs who had enjoyed the films when they were released, and a generation of budding film buffs who discovered these masterpieces for the first time.

This app encourages you to browse both lists, enjoy the original movie posters, make your own watch list, rate each of the titles, and learn about the directors, actors and writers of these films.

The best flexbox article/explanation I have found.

My father was nothing short of a brilliant man. He was an engineer. He spoke 7 or 8 languages, 4 of them fluently. He was well travelled, well read, and well spoken.

He was also vehemently skeptical of the occult, astrology, and all things flaky. 

Every once in a while he would spew the odd wisdom, that I simply assumed was the truth, and usually it was.

Not long ago I found myself explaining to my wife Sarah that the bed should be oriented such that your head points North. I have always done so. When asked why, I didn't have an answer. It's just what Papa said.

Today something made me think of this again, and I thought I'd look it up on the internets. Apparently, the hot topic of nocturnal directionality has been around for eons.

Some say that sleeping with your head oriented to the North results in horrible dreams and exhaustion. That is pretty close to home.

In Hinduism it is said that you should not sleep with your head pointing North or West. Vishnu Purana says: "It is beneficial to lie down with the head placed eastward or southward. The man who lies down with his head placed in contrary directions becomes diseased."

Yet others following Hinduism suggest that the opposite is true. Proponents of sattvik living suggest that there are frequencies present everywhere, and that sleeping toward the North avoids alignment with the negative Patal and tiryak frequencies.

Feng Shui proposes the same sentiment, though prefers Easterly orientation.

I have also seen reference to a tradition that people in the Northern hemisphere should orient to the North, and the opposite for the Southern hemisphere. My father grew up 15 degrees North of the equator.

There may be some science behind all of this. It is theorized that humans like many other species have an internal magnetic compass, our heads being the North pole and our feet at the South. In birds and fish it is thought that this compass aids in navigation.

When two magnets are oriented such that their like poles are aligned, a repulsive force is created by the magnetic fields. Is it possible that sleeping with our heads pointing North results in a constant experience of a repulsive force at the cellular level that could affect our health?

Studies have suggested that humans who sleep in an East-West position have far shorter R.E.M. sleep cycles, in which dreams occur, compared with North-South sleepers who got more REM sleep.

I have found no shortage of testimonials of people who after reorienting to sleep South-facing experience more energy and focus and decreased stress. The same seems to be true about each direction.

One uncited source reports that babies, left to their own devices, will orient themselves toward the North.

Now I feel even less certain.

You just added a Razor web page to a traditional ASP.NET project and now you get this error.

A new section has been added to your

Web.config

Problem: You are using System.IO.Compression.DeflateStream to decompress a stream, and you are getting this message.

Solution: Seek forward 2 bytes first. There is a two byte signature 0x789c at the beginning of the deflated file.

My portable installation of Thunderbird was misbehaving. A simple operation like opening or deleting a message could take a minute or two.

The solution was close Thunderbird, delete any files ending in -wal, and restart Thunderbird. It is now back to normal.

You need this PECL extension to be installed if you would like to see an upload progress indicator in Drupal. Installation is easy, but not obvious.

Because The Man knows enough about you.

http://www.sitepoint.com/5-great-google-analytics-alternatives/

Read my latest article at CodeProject. http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/731954/Simple-Auto-Update-Let-your-application-update-i-2

Building using Xamarin.iOS and Visual Studio 2012 stopped working for me when my debugging target is a physical device. Clicking Start resulted in the message:

System.InvalidOperationException: The operation cannot be completed because a build is already in progress.

It worked fine at invoking the simulator.

This appears to be a bug, but there is a workaround: Go to the solution's Configuration Manager and uncheck Deploy.

This issue and workaround are present in Xamarin.iOS 1.8.365.

A custom control, like the calendar component shown here, requires many subviews. In fact, to generate this view requires about 700 subviews, unless manually user-drawn.

Apple's AutoLayout was introduced in iOS6 to provide a means to layout user interfaces independently of screen size, aspect-ration, and resolution. Unfortunately it is very ineffecient and appears to have an order of O(c^n) i.e. every subview added makes the layout take exponentially longer.

The control that is shown, designed to use AutoLayout, takes up to 10 seconds to render on an iPad. This essentially makes it unusable.

In examining the execution using Instruments I came to the realization that it was all Apple code that was swallowing all this time. Eventually I found two others who came to the same conclusion the hard way:

• http://floriankugler.com/blog/2013/4/21/auto-layout-performance-on-ios
• http://pilky.me/view/36

By turning off AutoLayout, the calendar renders (incorrectly of course) in a fraction of a second. I'll be spending this weekend writing my own MagicLayout code, which will be used by the cross-platform component library that is in development.

I walked away for a few minutes and apparently the kitten decided to monitor top; then fell asleep.

28 sleeping processes. 1 running process: moused.

http://www.dotnetfiddle.net/

Dreamweaver and Fireworks used to be Macromedia products, before Macromedia was purchased by Adobe. As I discovered after receiving email this week to macromedia at yvanrodrigues.com, that user database was merged into Adobe's.

There is a world-wide shortage of bytes. Think of the children. Shorten your password now!

My Grouper app was recently reviewed on ILoveFreeSoftware.com.

Windows 8 actually allows you to create a group of tiles similar apps, for example a group of all social apps, group of chatting apps, group of movies and music apps etc. You don’t need to download anything extra for grouping apps together. However Windows 8 doesn’t provide any mechanism to name these groups of apps. So, you need to install this simple light weight utility app Grouper from the Productivity Category in Windows Store. You can use the Windows 8 Search Charm to locate the app in Windows Store or click on the download link given at the end of this article. Then follow the steps of this Windows 8 tutorial.

Read the full article.

http://www.fooplot.com

If so, and you have checked that the ApplicationId and AdUnitId are valid, you probably don't have Internet turned on in the application manifest.

I encounted this exception while resizing an image of only 539x539px.

Upon closer inspection, the problem was that the image's PixelFormat was not one supported by the framework (System.Drawing.Imaging.PixelFormat.8207 which is CMYK).

Writing a Design Brief

Before asking one or more graphic designers to submit designs, time should be taken to write a solid design specification, or brief. The quality of designs received is in reflective of the quality of the brief.

The art of the brief is to give enough information to inspire the designer without inadvertently planting an idea that will limit or bias the his or her creativity.

Introduction

Explain what is being designed, and possibly why. How will it be used, and by whom? Where are we starting, and what does the finish line look like?

Be as specific as possible e.g. “a logo for business cards and envelopes”, or “a home page, a content page, and a report page with charts”.

About the Client

Introduce the client and the nature of the client’s business without revealing the client. This is not for fear that the designer will contact the client but rather that he or she may encounter information that could steer the design in the wrong direction; for example seeing and old logo that the client hates.

Tell the designer about the brand, especially if one has been well established. What colours does the client’s logo contain?

Include any pertinent details about the client’s industry and even its competitors.

Constraints

List all established constraints to avoid wasted time. Stating that a design must be high-contrast for accessibility, or no wider than 960 pixels will allow the designer to focus on only what is practical.

Directions

Brief the designer on the goals and target market for this design.

Are there colours, or colour palettes to adhere to or to avoid? Or other traits, like the client likes/hates rounded corners. Again, mentioning that the client hates rounded corners will help eliminate those designs before we even start, but saying that the client likes them could result in 25 designs, each with round corners.

What values, feelings, or messages should the design convey? Are there themes to consider or avoid.

Consider using metaphors or comparisons to express intangible traits. “Like that Mac guy in the Apple ad, but less of a jerk”, “more like the Beatles than the Rolling Stones”, or “smokes dope, but doesn’t inhale.”

Inspiration

Provide sources of inspiration. This should be as varied as the expectation of diversity.

If “the Victoria’s Secret website” is the only source mentioned, you will probably receive something that resembles the Victoria’s Secret website. If five different clothing websites are specified, each having its own style, the designer will be forced to get a sense of the client’s preference without fixating on one particular style.

If possible, detail about what or why the client likes about each: the typography of one site, the mood of another, the proportions of a third. Make note of any exceptions, “love the colours but its needs way more whitespace”.

Consider

Supply any elements that each design must include. This may include a fake logo that resembles the clients logo in colours and proportions.

Supply any text that will be present such as fake phone numbers or e-mail addresses. Request that any paragraph text be greeked or direct them to http://lipsum.com

If designs will/should contain photographs or drawings, supply a collection of images that the designer is allowed to use and make it clear that other images are not allowed. This keeps the designer focused on layout instead of image selection and likewise enables the client to focus on the designs instead of the photographs.

I tripped across this great article by Eric T. Mueller that details some of the nuances associated with learning the French language from an Anglo's point of view.

Citation: Mueller, Erik T. (1998). Fluent French: Experiences of an English speaker. New York: Signiform.

I have been a customer of iWeb for 5 years. I chose them because they were a Canadian hosting company that offered good value on dedicated servers, and because they supported FreeBSD. Over the years I have leased 5 servers from them concurrently. On February 5 I experienced problems during an OS update and needed help. Instead I got a rude surprise.

Hi there, I wanted to send some feedback, and I waited a few days to cool off a bit. :)

I chose iWeb for a few reasons. You are Canadian; you have well-reputed support staff; you support open-source by mirroring many projects; your prices for dedicated servers are affordable; and you support FreeBSD.

You can imagine how frustrated (to put it mildly) I was last week when my server went down after a routine OS patch and I contacted support only to get the answer "we don't offer anymore support for FreeBSD".

I follow iWeb on Twitter, I read the iWeb blog, and I log into the customer hub regularly. Not only had no one thought to contact customers using FreeBSD to give us warning prior to dropping support so we could make other arrangements, but as far as I can tell there was no public announcement whatsoever.

Of course this isn’t about FreeBSD. I’m disappointed that you chose to drop support and it will certainly affect my choice of provider in the future, but I acknowledge that these are usually decisions based on numbers and economics. Perhaps you found it hard to find qualified support staff; perhaps its part of your focus on your smart server product; perhaps there just isn’t enough demand. It’s about being told that you chose not to support me long before I needed your support.

I have considered your managed services in the past, but the main reason I have opted not to subscribe for added support is that anytime I have had a problem that in sysadmin terms is fixable (a broken gmirror that won’t repair, an inconsistent network connection, or in this case an OS patch that conflicted with the hardware) the only solution I am offered is a new hard drive and a reinstall. While I have 10+ years experience as a sysadmin, I look to your staff when I don’t have time, physical access, or patience to deal with a problem.

In this case, as you can see in the ticket, after I was told that the OS was no longer supported, my subsequent questions were not even properly considered. When I determined that the NIC that was installed to try to help with the problem was making it worse, I asked that it be removed and was told “You can try to disable the nic in the BIOS. As said earlier, we do not offer any support for FreeBSD. We can re-install your server and connect your old disk via USB to allow you to recover your data.†It took another hour debate of back and forth for them to simply remove the NIC.

Once the second NIC was removed I was again able to boot enough that I could see that when the OS patch was installed, a new driver switched the em0 and em1 interfaces and effectively broke em0. The simple command “freebsd-update rollback†restored the server to its previously working state.

Please use this feedback constructively. I encourage you to contact your customers individually and make a public announcement both about this change in support; and in the future, 3-6 months before dropping support for any other operating systems.

Yvan

The next day an announcement was posted on iWeb's website.

 I received a response a few days later.

Hello Mr. Rodrigues,

Thank you for your feedback to management. Your comments are appreciated.

Please accept our apologies for the treatment of your ticket 6129693, in which you were twice given misinformation about the operating systems we are currently supporting. We can clearly see how this misinformation not only adversely affected the treatment of your issue, but how it has given you a misimpression of iWeb and our attitude towards our clients.

In fact, we do currently support BSD and will continue to do so until April 30th, 2013. This information is currently being disseminated to our clients in advance of the end of life for this product for exactly the reasons you cited in your email; we do not wish for any client to be caught unawares by this change and wish to give ample time for alternate arrangements to be made.

The system administrators who treated your ticket were either uninformed or misinformed on this issue; an grievous error that we assure you will be addressed internally. We are sincerely sorry for this lapse in service and would like to offer you full credit on your current invoice for server  CL-T012-164CL along with our apologies.

Have the issues with the server been successfully resolved at this point, or would you like further assistance from one of senior agents in order to have things as you would like? We would be most happy to have someone help you on this, you have only to give the word.

Please advise if the proposed credit is amenable to you and we can do anything to help.

Sincerely,
Misty

Hello, Misty,

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner -- the e-mail that I have registered with iWeb is a secondary one that is only used for support tickets when my main SMTP server goes down. My main contact is [redacted].

Thank you for this and your previous e-mail in response to my concern about iWeb's discontinuation of FreeBSD support, specifically with concern to that support ticket.

I appreciate the credit for the KVM and the month of service on that server.

I saw that you have since officially made the announcement about discontinuation of support of FreeBSD as well as some older Windows platforms. Please heed my advice in the future that you give 6-12 months notice on future support changes. This is common practice and is what most of your competitors follow. As you can understand, to organizations with a large IT infrastructure, even 3 months is considered short notice, and 1-2 months could incite panic.

It is my understanding that come April 31 my FreeBSD server itself will not be affected but that support or reinstallation will not be offered; that is, I am responsible for all support. Please let me know if this is not the case.

I have a request that I hope you will consider.

It would be of great value to people like myself, both users of widely adopted operating systems such as FreeBSD as well as niche ones (BeOS, other linuxes, etc) if you would offer a "bare-metal dedicated server" program.

The idea is that customers could order a dedicated server and you would connect a DVD drive and KVM for the customer to install the OS of their choice. It would be understood that your only support obligation would be to reconnect the drive and KVM when requested (which you already do) and replace faulty hardware. Customers could send you an installation DVD by courier or perhaps for a small fee such as $25 you could burn an ISO when requested. Perhaps it could come with a "do-it-yourself" support tier that included one emergency KVM hookup per month.

My suggestion would accomplish a few things. (a) it would be very helpful to customers with specialized needs; (b) you would be offering a very unique service in your market -- filling the gap between off-the-shelf leased servers and colocation; (c) it would strengthen your image as a customer-focused company. It could even be marketed with an angle like "Canadians embrace diversity, and so does their most reliable hosting provider".

If this isn't a possibility, the only additional thing I would request is a free month of service for overlap if/when I'm ready to migrate to another supported server.

Thank you.

Today after updating some ports and restarting apache, CAS stopped working and I got the message:

This seems to be a regression of an old bug. To fix it, unpack the source code, apply this patch (see diff) and rebuild and reinstall

mod_auth_cas.so

I think any project that could have multiple issues requiring resolution, especially on an ongoing basis deserve an issue tracker, also known as a ticket system.

In the past I have used Eventum, RT, and Bugzilla, Mantis, and the Google Code IssueTracker. My favourite of these is Eventum, but when considering a new tracker I did some looking around.

I have found that most trackers can be divided into:

• general-purpose trackers (like the ones mentioned above)
• do everything including tracking trackers (Horde)
• trackers designed for software development, usually supporting an agile workflow.

While browsing SourceForge I stumbled upon WebIssues. It is a general-purpose tracker but it has some nice features that make it unique.

• In addition to a web-based client, it has a full-featured cross-platform desktop client with native support for Windows, Linux, and OS X.
• It supports three different database back-ends, MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQL Server.
• It has an attractive user-interface yet is fast and solid.
• It supports different types of tickets, such as bugs and tasks. Each type has customizable attributes and new types and attributes can be added. It even comes pre-loaded with a type called forum that can be used as a simple message board.
• Reports can be exported to CSV, HTML and even PDF format.
• It is well documented, including:
  • a comprehensive user manual in English and Polish in online, downloadable HTML, and PDF formats.
  • developer documentation that introduces contributors to the concepts used in the software.

I tried the software and it installed on the server like a dream. It was simply a matter of creating an empty database and user on my MySQL server, unpacking the server component to a directory on my webserver, and running the simple web-based installer. Many applications try to install this seamlessly, but few achieve it without a snag or two.

I was thrilled to discover that not only is the client available as a portable application, but it is packaged in PortableApps (paf) format. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of PortableApps.

Unfortunately one feature it doesn't have, one that I consider a necessity is an inbound e-mail gateway, so that users can create new tickets and update tickets simple by sending an e-mail to support@example.com. 

Of course the beauty of open-source software is that contributions are welcome. I have joined Michał Męciński and the WebIssues team to add an inbound e-mail gateway.

Michał's code is very clean, and I was able to add the new functionality in about 10 hours. It is currently being tested at my site, and I'll merge it with the rest of the project when it has been thoroughly tested. It will still require another 20-30 hours to smooth out the rough edges and document it.

WebIssues started in 2005 as Michał's master's thesis. He made it available publicly in 2006 and it won the Qt Centre Programming Contest in 2008. The current branch was released in December 2011 and the latest release, 1.0.4 was released just a couple of months ago.

If you are considering a ticket system, please take a serious look at WebIssues.

If you think a system like this would be useful in your business but you don't know where to start, please contact me.

My EC2 Bacula storage configuration consists of a single pool containing multiple storage devices. Each storage device is a 100GB EBS store, and each contains a fixed number of prelabelled 1GB volumes.

Here's a little script I whipped together to prelabel the volumes with an incremental identifier.

NAME
    bulklabel -- label new Bacula volumes with incremental names

VERSION
    1.0 February 5, 2013

SYNOPSIS
    bulklabel <pool> <storage> <start> <count> <prefix>
    bulklabel <pool> <storage> <start> <count>

    pool:    name of pool resource
    storage: name of storage resource
    start:   first numerical identifier
    count:   number of volumes to create
    prefix:  optional volume name prefix

EXAMPLES
    bulklabel Default FileStorage1 10000 100 Vol-
        will create 100 volumes named Vol-10000, Vol-10001...
    bulklabel Scratch Tape1 20000 50
        will create 50 volumes named 20000, 20001...

COPYRIGHT
    (c) 2013, Yvan Rodrigues http://yvanrodrigues.com
              Red Cell Innovation Inc. http://two-red-cells.com

LICENSE
    FreeBSD license
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_License

I needed to use the Android logo today, but the SVG I got from WikiCommons was made of many paths that used their strokes to exclude parts of the image instead of properly constructing the paths.

Here is the logo as a single path. It can be scaled, recoloured, or put on a background without any problems.

I just got off the phone with Rogers after changing my internet plan from the Extreme Plus (45Mbps/4Mbps/150GB @ $74.99/mo) plan to their 300GB Express (25Mbps/2Mbps/300GB @ $71.99/mo).

You see, Rogers raised their prices today, and my bill was getting a bit pricey. I don't need 45Mbps, and if I did I would use up that 150GB pretty quick. The new price is about $30 more than their competitor, who ironically leases their lines from Rogers.

When they raised their prices they sent me mailer to inform me. It listed all their plans with the old and new rates. When I saw the 300GB plan I was pleased to know I could get twice the volume by sacrificing some speed (I've been burned by overage charges and didn't want to pay an extra $20 a month for 80GB more on the chance I went over my monthly allotment) .

So I called up customer service. The rep said she couldn't offer me the 300GB plan. Oh for fuck's sake. I read between the lines. I've played this game before.

OK, I'd like to cancel my service please.

I'm sorry to hear that. You'll need to call this other number for cancellation.

Fine.

Hi, yes, I'd like to cancel my service.

No problem, we can take care of that, but I'll need to put you through to another department.Hi, yes, I'd like to cancel my service. I need more volume and I don't want to pay more.Well, I have a 300GB plan I can offer.

Of course once I got through to the retention department (as it's called in the biz) I was easily able to get the plan I wanted, and both the rep and I knew we were just going through the motions of this stupid cat-and-mouse game.

Everyone in business knows that it's so much cheaper to retain an existing customer than find a new one, and yet companies like this show contempt for their customers by offering new customers 6 months of cheap rates and other incentives; and only offering value to existing customers when they threaten to leave.

It's also well known that both customer and employee satisfaction increases when front-line employees are empowered to offer the best solution possible to their clients.

That means the only logical explanation is that Rogers has done the math. This isn't a misguided policy. It's a business strategy. They know their policies piss off existing customers; they willfully bend over for new customers; and they're willing to accept the consequences of trading loyal customers for new ones, because there is a net economic benefit. They use the same strategy in their wireless, cable TV, and even magazine markets.

Do Rogers' executives adopt this strategy at home too?

Honey, I know we've been married for 10 years, but I'm not willing to put any more work into this relationship. I think I'm ready for someone younger and more naïve.

You've got to be kidding. If you're going to be a prick, I'm leaving. I want a divorce.

Oh. That sounds expensive and inconvenient. What if I let you drive the Lexus. Will you stay?

While attempting to soft mod an old XBox using the cable swap method, XboxHDMaker kept giving me the error:

No xbox partition table found on /dev/hda drive is not locked but locking is enabled dont reboot untill you have build a working xbox hdd since reboot will lock the drive press ant key to abort operation.

The hard drive in question had a valid partition table, but several attempts left me with the same message.

I believe the issue is that I was not restarting the PC. The PC was already booted into the Linux live CD. I shut down the PC and rebooted it to the BIOS setup screen. At this point I swapped cables. It worked!

but this confirms it. Bear in mind that upload is server to client. I'm betting on a bad cable between the server and the switch, but we'll see what iWeb says.

Follow-up: They had originally configured the NIC for auto-negotiate which it didn't like. Setting it to 10/full fixed it.

Since my review of the Hipstreet Equinox 2, I've had a lot of questions about how I was able to install Google Play onto the device (which then makes loading tons of other first-tier apps, like Netflix, Google Maps, etc. onto the device quite easy).

Like many of the cheapest Android devices, the Equinox 2 did not go through Google's validation process and therefore is not allowed to be preinstalled on the device. Presumably this accounts for part of why these devices are cheap. Instead it ships with GetJar, which although it gives you access to thousands of apps, does not let you get the most popular ones.

Some apps can be downloaded directly from the publisher, others can be found by searching for torrents, and many are available on Usenet. These can then be sideloaded onto the device using one of many different methods. The problem is that you may be downloading a virus, or accidentally be pirating a commercial app.

The device is already rooted when you get it so you would think you might be able to sideload Play onto the device. Indeed, there are many places you can download all the various versions of Play (or Android Store or whatever it was called) and you can sideload them onto the device. The bad news is that it always crashes. If you are lucky it will get as far as showing its splash screen.

The process I used to sideload the app involves a few steps. If you are not technically inclined, this method isn't for you.

1. Install the Android SDK on your computer.
2. Download the Google apps bundle.
3. Copy files to the filesystem.

Install the Android SDK on your computer

The Android SDK (also known as the Android Developer Tools or ADT bundle) includes everything needed to develop apps for Android devices, and deploy them onto a device. It's the latter part that is important. It is available here for PC, Linux, and Mac. 

When you plug in your device into your PC, hopefully it will install two drivers. The first is the mass storage driver, which lets your computer use the device like a USB memory stick. The second driver is called Android Device Bridge (ADB). For us, this is the important one.

On a Mac a driver is not required. On a PC it is. Unfortunately Hipstreet/Kobian does not publish an ADB driver for the device, so your Windows Device Manager will probably indicate an unrecognized device. I modified the Google driver to work with this device and you can download from this article.

Once the SDK is installed and the driver is working, you'll need to find the directory where the SDK was installed to find the platform-tools directory.

On my PC this is located not in Program Files, but your user directory, e.g. C:UsersYvanAppDataLocalAndroidandroid-sdkplatform-tools.

On the Mac it depends where you unpack it.

Now familiarize yourself with the adb tool.

Download the Google apps bundle

Although it is free software, I'm not what the rules are about redistribution so you're on your own to find this. The one I used is called gapps-ics-20120429-signed (Google Apps for Ice Cream Sandwich). It includes pretty much all the Google stuff that would normally preload on a device, about 25 programs.

Copy files to the filesystem

Use the adb tool to copy files to the appropriate directories on the device. You need to use this tool, because these system directories are not accessible from the GUI, even on a rooted device. If you find an app that lets you copy files to the system directories, you can skip step 1 and use that tool.

If you run SketchUp with multiple monitors, this may happen to you. You start up the software and see its icon in the task bar, but there aren't any windows to be seen.

The software actually started OK, but the main window is off-screen.

To reset the window position, run

regedit

HKCUSoftwareGoogleSketchUp8CSkDialogx

Dialog

Dlg

Source: National Post

adb tcpip <tcp_port>
adb connect <ip_address>
abd devices

I needed an Android device for a current project for testing.

Currently surrounded by 5 screens, adding another wasn't something that particularly excited me. I'm not a huge fan of my iPhone, so another phone was an option, but I can't afford a new one, and I'm not knowledgeable enough about older models to choose one that would be a good fit.

A tablet could be useful, and the Nexus 10 is tempting, but it's not available just yet and if I am going to spend more than $400 on a tablet, it is probably going to be a new Windows tablet. I want something cheap.

I briefly considered a Blackberry Playbook, not because I really want one, but because they're practically giving them away at $150 – great value if you can use it. Unfortunately, although the Playbook can execute Android apps, they must first go through some kind of conversion process. I'm not looking for more complications, and I almost certainly wouldn't be able to debug my app remotely in Visual Studio via USB with a Playbook.

I settled on the Hipstreet Equinox 2, a recently-released second-generation 10.1" tablet. Like most people I'm pretty hesistant about the Hipstreet name, a name associated with cheapest-of-the-cheap MP3 players available at Walmart. At $199 however, this model boasts many features that its competitors in the $150-250 don't, and reviews of the prevous Equinox generation indicate that it wasn't too bad. The truth is, I couldn't find a single review of this product, so I hope this article, and maybe a review to follow, is useful to someone.

I ordered the tablet from Dell.ca and it arrived at my door 40 hours later. It came in a shrink-wrapped solid "board game"-style box. Sorry about the quality of the photos, the only camera I have on me is my iPhone.

Included in the box:

• DC charger
• Male mini-USB to female USB (17cm)
• Male mni-USB to male USB (100cm)

The battery is fully discharged. The screen film instructs the user to charge the unit for a full 6 hours before use.

Ports:

• Micro-SDHC (up to 32GB)
• Power/charge
• Micro-B USB for connection to host (cable included)
• Micro-B USB for accessory (converter cable to full-side USB included)
• Mini HDMI (type C)
• Headphone

Buttons:

• Power
• Volume up
• Volume down
• Back 

Other:

• Forward-facing camera 

Size:

• Mass: 600g
• Screen diagonal: 256mm (10.1")
• Dimensions: 262 x 185 x 10mm

The construction is sturdier than I expected. It is very solid and doesn't budge in the twist test.

Start-up

Once powered up, a swipe of the finger results in the home screen. A welcome video is placed on this screen. It explains (in English) how to turn on the unit (?), set up WiFi, configure your e-mail, and so on. At maximum volume, the video would definitely not be audible in a noisy environment.

The home screen icons are:

• Camera
• Dolphin Browser
• Music
• GetJar (app store)
• Email
• Super HD Play (video player)
• Settings

First Experiences

These are first experiences with the Android operating system, not necessarily this unit.

Although I will let it charge for 6 hours, I need to get some work done, so I go about setting it up.

As I configure my e-mail I realize I have no idea how to make the screen-keyboard go away. On the 7th guess, I enter the correct password.

Although the unit doesn't include a GPS, it does use WiFi geolocation when possible to guess your location +/- 100m.

There are many ways to unlock the device, including facial recognition.

A speech-to-text icon is prominent throughout the UI. It uses Google speech-to-text. I look forward to checking this out.

The settings imply that use of a USB mouse will work. So will USB Ethernet and GSM/3G modem.

Oooh, a developer settings screen. There are some very useful options here, like showing all touches, flashing screen areas that update, CPU usage stats, Activity purging. I've never had a device cater to my needs like this before!

The device seems to neither be charging nor losing charge while I'm using it when plugged in.

Installing Apps

One of the main complaints people seem to bitch about in online reviews of cheap Android devices is that they don't include the Google Play store. Instead they have something called GetJar. Personally, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Supposedly it offers more than 600,000 available downloads. As long as I can get Angry Birds and a few other necessities, I don't really need to find a new way to give people my money. For what it's worth, I've heard of people successfully installing Google Play and the Amazon App store on cheap tablets.

Update: I actually came across many apps that I want that were not easily available from sources other than Google Play. It took many hours, but eventually I devised a way to load up all of the most up-to-date Ice Cream Sandwich stock apps, including Google Play.

Note: The tablet is already rooted when shipped.

Installation of apps from GetJar is very fast. Download and installation of the Twitter app took less than seconds, something that would take about a minute on my iPhone.

Oh good, Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons are in the top 20 list. This is going to be easier than I thought. They're free too.

Hmm.. no Netflix app in Getjar.

Dolphin Browser

When I fire it up it asks if I want to enable Flash support never, always or on demand. I like that. It also asks me if I want to emulate a desktop, iPhone, iPad, or Android phone. Then it crashes. Hmm.

All my fingerprints are getting pretty noticeable now.

The most important sites, Red Cell Innovation Inc., and CodeProject work fine, so that's all that matters.

Follow-up: 45 days later

• Dell put these on sale 30 days after I bought this one, so I called them up and got a price protection credit for $50.
• I'm glad I put the Play Store and the Google apps on it. The Play Store experience is much better than any other repositories, and it auto-updates downloaded apps without intervention. It makes the whole experience much closer to that of a Nexus device.
• Physically the device is holding up well. There are some fine scratches on the screen, which isn't surprising, as I've done nothing to prevent them.
• The screen could definitely be more sensitive. It's fine for a game of Angry Birds or tapping out a short e-mail, but it's not as sensitive as my old iPhone.
• The mini-HDMI connector seems a little flaky, but it could be my cable's fault.
• With regular use, the battery needs charging every other day. One could go a lot longer with occasional use.
• The speaker is way too quiet. To listen to a podcast in bed I need to listen at maximum, or close to it. It isn't suitable for anything except a quiet room without headphones. To make things worse, the speaker is on the back, so if you put it down on its back most of the sound is muffled.
• If you like other browsers, Opera Mini, FireFox, and Chrome all run well. I find Chrome a bit slow and my preference is probably Opera Mini.
• Video play from a file or Netflix is pretty smooth, even when connected to an external display.
• The hardware volume and back buttons only work when the unit is turned on and unlocked.
• I have never had to cold boot the device, though I have inadvertently done so by letting the battery drain completely a few times.
• Overall for its price I think this unit gives good value. I have not seen any other 10" tablets for $150.
• The built-in e-mail app is nice but its one shortcoming is that is has to poll IMAP servers every x  minutes (minimum 5), instead of keeping a socket open.

I spent a few hours debugging this exception in an Android app. When you create a new View you usually set its

LayoutParams

LayoutParams

LinearLayout

FrameLayout

LayoutParams

FrameLayout.LayoutParams

Pronunciation

/kwɛk/ (rhymes with fleck)

Definition

A set consisting of a question and its accompanying answer(s).

Origin

Created while writing an educational video game by Yvan Rodrigues in 2012 to describe sets of questions and their answers without using the word "question".

Examples

The quiz game has a library of 500 quecks.

Each multiple-choice queck has four possible answers.

Trivial Pursuit expansion packs typically contain 1650 quecks.

This error can occur in the constructor of

AppDelegate

base.ctor()

This occured to me when I have specified the application's entry point in

Info.plist

A similar error will occur any time an outlet exists for a control that no longer exists in Interface Builder.

Whenever a website asks me to sign up or share personal information, I always use a unique, tracable e-mail address. These are those to which I now regularly receive spam.

• Hyundai Accessory Store (Gary Rome Hyundai)
• Adobe (confirmed: 150 million accounts leaked), also Macromedia accounts, because they were merged with Adobe's account database after their merger
• XpressCall
• Jamaica Real Estate Guide
• Rogers on Demand
• Westco Batteries
• eHarmony (confirmed: 1.5 million accounts leaked)
• Serra Mazda (buymazdaparts.com)
• Pokerroom.com
• Zebra Technologies
• True Help Financial Planning
• Driver Heaven
• Alpha Gems/Alpha Imports
• World Vision Canada
• Miller Coors
• Nokia Developer

This DIY fly trap did the trick in our kitchen. It consists of a dish of cider vinegar in plastic stretch-film with a 1cm diameter hole in the top.

I usually perform a binary update of my jails using

#freebsd-update fetch install #freebsd-update -d /usr/jails/basejail fetch install

This has worked for years. After doing it yesterday I was unable to login to any of my jails and pretty much everything broke. For example logging in using

ssh

/bin/sh permission denied

After spending the day on it I have discovered that the upgrade process changed permissions on

/usr/jails/basejail

700

755

When I used a nested listview for the first time, I was a bit surprised to find that it created new a new header dynamically instead of just keeping the header and footer of the parent. For my current project this is really important, so I searched around and found many people with the same expectation.

I've modified

$.mobile.listview._createSubPages

true

false

. Ideally this could be implemented as an event or callback so that the coder could override the

_createSubPage

behaviour.